


Cinis, Manes, Fabula

by reine_des_corbeaux



Category: Richard II - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bad Theology, Canon Time Period but Same-Sex Marriage is a Thing, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Marriage Out of Guilt, Pining of a sort, Same-Sex Marriage, gratuitous religious symbolism, stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-24 00:23:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20017222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reine_des_corbeaux/pseuds/reine_des_corbeaux
Summary: Richard of Bordeaux had been resplendent once.Or, the one where deposition is accompanied by marriage.





	Cinis, Manes, Fabula

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bold_seer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bold_seer/gifts).



Richard of Bordeaux was resplendent once. 

It is nearly miraculous, how losing a crown can a person, make him a dusty relic of who he had once been, Henry Bolingbroke thinks. Perhaps it is the walls of Pontefract Castle leeching the light from Richard’s face, the darkness of the cold stone, or perhaps it is simply the shock of loss, the crown still freshly gone from his head. Yet he still possesses some majesty, some hint of the kingly dignity he bore in the time before. In his corner, though he looks at Henry with dimmed eyes, Richard is still unable to insinuate or flatter. He stands quite straight, watching, and his face is all judgement, like a statue on a cathedral portal. 

“Have you come here to kill me yourself?” he asks Henry, a ghost of a smile haunting thinned lips. “That’s nice of you. Maybe you can pretend you’re honorable then.” 

Henry starts. Though dimmed, Richard’s gaze is still piercing in its intensity, brimming with vestiges of regal power. He cannot forget that once, Richard was respected. Once people expected great things of him. Now, all that is gone. 

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. 

Once, before exile and deposition, when Richard ruled, they’d met in a garden, and Henry thought Richard the fairest man in England, but said nothing. He wonders now if he would have proposed a tryst, or if that would have been a step too far. For all Henry knows, Richard would have welcomed a courtly dalliance. But now, there is no chance of that. He comes bearing a sword and a knife-edged offer to Richard’s tower prison. Gardens and dalliances have no place within the stone walls of Pontefract. 

“I don’t intend to kill you,” Henry tells Richard. 

Uncrowned Richard merely snorts, derisive and defiant. 

“It would be easier to believe that if you came without your sword.” 

“A necessary precaution,” Henry returns. “For my own safety.” 

“What need of safety have you here? I am in chains, and you are free. What can an uncrowned king do to an anointed monarch?” 

There are remarks to be made, reminders of willingness to resign the crown, of loyalty and fealty to the new king, but Henry bites his tongue. Better to stay silent, so that his offers might land with few theatrics and many benefits as all. 

“It is better to be prepared,” Henry says. “A king cannot afford to take risks.” 

Richard looks bemused, or angry, and Henry wonders if he has been too blunt. Is it a low blow even now to lecture Richard on the values of kingship? But Henry cannot question, for he has a mission, and God willing, he will complete it before the day is out. It is all he can do. There’s a sick feeling in his stomach, the kind of nauseous feeling one gets just before a gesture of absolution. Henry prays silently that Richard’s acceptance of his proposal will be absolution enough for this sin sitting heavy as church-stones in his stomach. 

“So, explain why you are here, if not to mock at me in my diminished state,” Richard says, turning away from Henry and towards the narrow window, the thin, wan light it allows in barely illuminating the room. 

Richard stands in that sunspot unspeaking for some time, while Henry fumbles for words that are neither mocking nor over-proud, but firm instead, at once kingly and approachable. Speaking to deposed kings was never something he was taught to do in his boyhood, never something he learned at his father’s knee. It is new and strange, and all the while, Henry cannot forget that he himself was the deposer of this deposed king, that he brought God’s anointed low.. 

When Henry finally speaks, it is carefully, as though he is testing each word before he lets it touch the air. And Richard looks sometimes at him, and sometimes out that same thin window. What he can see is anyone’s guess, for the slit in the wall is narrow. It seems more mockery than privilege to accord such a tiny view to a former lord of men. 

“Richard of Bordeaux,” Henry says, then stops. 

What do you call a king who is king no longer, despoiled of his lands and titles? Does he get any name at all? 

“Yes?” Richard asks. “I do remember that to be my name, though I don’t often hear it anymore.” 

“You are, I trust, familiar with the practice of Jonathan-marriage?” 

Richard looks down, draws in a shuddery breath, and when he looks up at Henry, his eyes are tear-bright. 

“I wondered if that might have been your aim all this while. Very well. But I should not have thought you were one for remarriage.” 

He has a point, but Henry has always found refutation an easy thing. Stubbornness is one of his virtues, and it is stubbornness that brought him Richard’s throne. He forges on ahead. 

“My wife is dead. Your wife is sent away to France. Even if one could not partake in both this and the sacrament, which one can, we are both untethered.” 

Richard smiles, a bitter, biting smile, undercut by the tears in his eyes. 

“You want me to give up any power I might still possess totally, for the sake of your realm. Or is it for the sake of your own guilt?” 

Henry doesn’t know how to answer that. He looks to the floor, at the bare stones and the rotting straw, and he feels a sharp pang of regret. Deposing Richard was for the good of England, and for the good of Henry’s line, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to rid himself fully of the guilt he feels for it. 

There has not been a Jonathan-marriage in England since the Conquest, when William took Harold into a covenant, plucked the crown from Harold’s royal brow and changed the kingdom’s destiny forever. And now, Henry decides, he will change the kingdom too. Richard will be happier than unhappy Edward, walled up in a different, miserable castle so many years ago. He has a choice that Edward never had. 

Richard is biting his lower lip, and even in the dimness, Henry can tell the lip is chapped and scabbed from many such bites. He too looks down. 

The unsaid words are heavy in the air. _Your partisans, Richard, could take the crown from me should you remain at Pontefract. But married, you become an asset. You become the consort and beloved of a king, having ceded all claim and right to the throne through the bonds of mutual affection._

“I do not believe a king, uncrowned though he may be, should be left alive in a mouldering tomb,” Henry says instead to break the silence. 

Henry worries that Richard will not understand such practicality. He is, after all, the man who took the lands of Lancaster though John of Gaunt’s son yet lived, had unwise favorites in his youth, burned down a manor house because it was the dying-place of his wife. But even the irrational may find rationality occasionally. Even kings can bow and bend their knees. Finally, Richard nods.  
“I accept. And when we are married, will you treat me kindly? Or will you lock me up again?” Richard asks. 

“I shall treat you with all respect you are due,” he says. 

“Then it is settled,” Richard says. “I shall marry you, and leave this place behind.” 

“I’ll send men to convey you to London,” Henry says hurriedly. 

When he is out of the castle, the day is fading, and in the distance, over the moors, the sky is black with an approaching storm. Pontefract looms above him, all forbidding towers like teeth from the hillside. He shivers, draws his cloak around him, and hurries away, glad to be able to leave those blind and empty shadows. 

***

The marriage, inasmuch as it can be called that, takes place in Westminster, in the half-built abbey church, its unfinished towers not half so foreboding as the towers of Pontefract. As on the day of the pledging, as Henry must think of the day in Pontefract as, there are storms gathering in the corners of the sky. Making his way to the Abbey, surrounded by his cortege, Henry glances up at the roiling darkness, matching the roiling unease within him. 

When they reached the porch of the abbey church, the heavens split open with a heavy pelting rain. Having just barely missed the deluge, Henry is glad to duck into the cool, incense-scented shadows of the church. It is too grand a space for such a small ceremony, and the echoes of his feet, usually so calming in a sacred space, unsettle Henry’s stomach. Rain drums against the stained glass windows, and the darkness outside lets only a stingy trickle of colored light fall through their panes. 

And there, near the rood screen, Richard waits, dressed all in red, like a bride or a martyr. He smiles half-heartedly, a resigned, peaceable smile. It is not at all regal, and thus, like the echoing footfalls, is disturbing. Henry has never seen him look so servile. 

“Your Majesty,” he says, with that same complacent smile, his eyes very distant. 

“It must be pleasant,” Henry says, “to be out in the world again.” 

“I suppose,” Richard replies. 

Unlike a sacramental marriage, Jonathan-marriages involve a prescribed ceremony. There are words to be said, renunciations to be made, as well as present consent to be given. But without an audience besides a few choice retainers, it all feels so prosaic. Henry, in his role as king, has little to do but stand proudly and accept. 

Richard, ever and always theatrical, performs his more complicated duties with aplomb. Again, he resigns his state and an elaborate crown (a rather meaningless and mostly symbolic motion now, for Sir Richard of Bordeaux was but a knight now, and king no longer.). Again, Richard speaks words of loyalty to Henry that needle Henry in the dark, cramped place where all his doubts about the legitimacy of his throne reside. 

In the days of the Conquest, in every rare case upon the continent, the Jonathan-marriage came before the deposition, as part and parcel of the proceedings, and now, Henry wishes he’d done things properly. It is right for the realm, all he has done, but for honor’s sake, this guilty marriage, this second abdication, feels like a sham. It is, Henry thinks for a moment, another pathetic ploy for political legitimacy. 

When Richard bestows his final title, and presses a dry kiss of peace to Henry’s lips, when the bishop announces them bound in a holy covenant, it feels to Henry like an unreality. His marriage to Mary had been nothing so subdued as this, though they’d both been frightened. And Richard had loved Anne, had he not? Will he and Richard ever find tenderness between themselves? How does a deposed king manage tenderness towards his deposer, after all? 

Such questions occupy Henry the whole way out of the echoing church, beneath the blind, polychrome eyes of saints and angels. Looking to his side, Henry notices Richard smiling. It is not a bright smile, but it seems more honest than the thin, wan one Richard wore throughout the ceremony. 

“You seem happy,” Henry notes. 

“I am,” Richard says. “I thought I’d be buried in some wretched hole at Pontefract, but now that we’re married, when I die, I’ll be buried in the Abbey, under my effigy. I’ve always loved this building.” 

Henry shakes his head. Trust Richard to talk of graves and epitaphs on his wedding day. 

“I hope I can bring you some happiness,” he says. He wonders if it’s futile. 

“You took my throne. And I’ve told you, you cannot take my griefs as well. Give me time to mourn, and I promise I’ll be merry by the spring.” 

They walk together out into the rain, still falling in misty sheets from the sky. The streets are a slurry of mud and debris beneath a glowering sky. It’s an inauspicious day for a wedding, and in this rain, an inauspicious day for a reign to begin and a fitting one for an old reign to end for good. 

***

There’s a feast to mark the wedding, for even a Jonathan-marriage is to be celebrated with all due pomp and circumstance. There is feasting and dancing, and Henry cannot pay attention to the music or the taste of food. He’s come a long way from exile and rebellion, and yet, sitting on England’s throne brings him little joy at this moment. But it will, it will. He must be certain of this. He has cleaned away his guilt through this final ceremony. 

Richard, next to him, is the model of decorum, and Henry cannot tell if he is truly enjoying the ceremony. He laughs and applauds and studiously does not look at Henry. Henry, for his part, tries to converse with courtiers, and enjoy the food, waiting until the celebrations wind to their close. 

After the meal, they retreat to Henry’s chambers, where Richard imperiously waves away the servants scattering fresh rushes and turning down bedding. 

“The king and I would speak alone,” he says, with an odd gulp of air around the word “king”. 

And soon they are alone, or alone as a king and his retinue can be, with two guards at the door. Richard crosses the chamber, sits on the dark, looming bed, and motions for Henry to sit beside him. 

“Have you considered what could happen in the years to come, now that I am freed from imprisonment?” 

Henry nods.  
“I have. Your partisans could try to assassinate me and my son. You are still a rival even without your crown.” 

“Exactly,” Richard says. “So why didn’t you kill me? Why did you marry me?” 

_Guilt. You were a king, and though it is better for all England that I took your crown, I feel the worse for it. This was a means to an end where you lived and I was king, and the love I bore for you once could flower anew._ But Henry cannot say all this now, as moonlight paints weary patches on the rush-strewn floor. 

Instead, he says, “I did love you once, as cousin and king, and for all you did, you did not deserve death.” 

“Even though I took your lands?” 

“I took your crown.” 

“And my freedom.” 

Henry starts. He did not want to hear this in such bald, accusatory terms, but he knows it all to be true. Even so, Richard is supposed to elide in floral terms, dance around truths with honeyed words. Henry is the blunt one. But perhaps, now that Henry is king and Richard is king-no-more, the wheel is reversed. 

“As I said before,” Henry says, “I hope you can learn to be happy.” 

In the low light of the fire, Richard’s eyes are flat and sad, saint’s eyes from a painted altarpiece. He looks at the fire, than at Henry. 

“Allow me to grieve longer. Not for lost state, but for lost stories. I will no longer be remembered as a king deposed and killed, but as a king deposed into the prison of long life. All I did as king will become one with the story of Merciful King Henry, who married his predecessor rather than murder him.” Richard looks away. 

“Perhaps that will benefit the legacy of your reign, and glorify mine,” Henry says. 

Richard laughs, low and bitter. 

“It’s all just stories, in the end. Sad stories of the deaths of kings. Though for now, I suppose, it’s a sad story of the life of a former king. So be it. History will have its story, once my grieving’s done.” 

Henry does not know what to say, but he is surprised and shocked when Richard presses a kiss to his lips, cups Henry’s face in his hands. It is a lover’s kiss and yet, he feels the duty in it, the pressing weight of histories colliding with lips and tongues and teeth. When Richard pulls away, he smiles sadly. 

“You said you loved me once, and I think once, I loved you too. Perhaps I can learn to make that love genuine again. But for now, let us give the world a fine story. Good King Henry and bad King Richard, bound by holy covenant and love. It’s worthy of a play.”  
And so, the wedding day truly ended. In the hearth, the fire crackled, and outside, a night bird called, and somewhere, far away from castles and kings and their deaths and loves, a new dawn rose pinkly in the sky. 

**Author's Note:**

> So, this takes place in a vague AU where a form of marriage to the new king can be a part of deposing an old one. The naming system for this form of marriage is based on a particular (modern) interpretation of the biblical story of Jonathan and David. Obviously, there are anachronisms here. In terms of characterization, I went off a weird mix of the Hollow Crown version of R2, the text of the play itself and biographical details gleaned from the Nigel Saul biography. 
> 
> I had a ton of fun with your prompts, and I hope you enjoy!  
> Title is from Persius's Satire V, and translates to "ashes, ghosts, story."


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